COETAIL--Applying Bloom's Digital Taxonomy in Japan
I had intended to post this COETAIL reflection prior to departing for Cambodia but ran out of time, so here I am in Cambodia with slow internet, after 5 days in a village with little electricity teaching barefoot in a village classroom, posting on technology in the classroom. I feel rather awed and privileged, to be able to engage in such a range of educational experiences--from the nearly no-tech (they had cell phones, a few TVs in the village, no internet) to the high-tech.
For this post I will focus on my university teaching in Japan. Recently I read this post by Andrew Churches: Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally, which offers a recast of Bloom's cognitive objectives from lower order thinking skills to higher order thinking skills. What is of value to me in the post is the digital taxonomy map, in which digital applications for each category of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating are suggested.
I began to consider one of the university courses I teach: Understanding American Culture, which I approach by focusing U.S. immigration history. I used WikiSpaces for sharing much of the materials for the course this year, and in recent end-of-term evaluation I asked the students to write, the reviews were mixed. Some found the wiki helpful. Others found the sign up process problematic. Others clearly never bothered to click on the links in my wiki pages because they complained that the handouts I gave them in class were on the wiki so what was the point of the wiki (this was not true--the materials handed out in class and on the wiki were different--a point they realized when they received below-passing scores the final test). Students at my Japanese university do not necessarily have their own computers, the classrooms are not wireless, and few students bring an iPad or laptop to class. I face the challenge of adding technology to my courses in an environment that does not fully support such efforts.
As I revamp this particular course over the next six months for when I teach it again in the fall of 2013, I realize I'll need to spend more time introducing the wiki during class. I also plan to add more content to the wiki--more links to videos, articles, websites for their own research, maps and more. I will also need to adjust settings and try to make pages for each presentation group to share their materials on a wiki page for the class to view.
I will also be going through the list of Blooms Digital Taxonomy to see what more I can do to better model the learning process. Japanese university students seem especially capable at remembering and understanding, but seem less experienced with applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. With the list of digital additions, I can easily see what digital applications I might be missing and might consider adding next time.
Of course, there's a limit to what I can introduce--the aim of the course is not to teach these digital applications, but rather to introduce U.S. culture--to Japanese students in the English language. Furthermore, the low-tech environment creates limitations. Yet as we all know, we tend to learn quickly when we have to use a process or tool for studying or work. So I will aim to sneak in some of the most important tech tools that I think they will need. Many of my students take the Understanding American Culture course as one of the requirements for getting their teaching license. As potential future teachers, they especially need more tech tools in their virtual tool belts.
For this post I will focus on my university teaching in Japan. Recently I read this post by Andrew Churches: Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally, which offers a recast of Bloom's cognitive objectives from lower order thinking skills to higher order thinking skills. What is of value to me in the post is the digital taxonomy map, in which digital applications for each category of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating are suggested.
I began to consider one of the university courses I teach: Understanding American Culture, which I approach by focusing U.S. immigration history. I used WikiSpaces for sharing much of the materials for the course this year, and in recent end-of-term evaluation I asked the students to write, the reviews were mixed. Some found the wiki helpful. Others found the sign up process problematic. Others clearly never bothered to click on the links in my wiki pages because they complained that the handouts I gave them in class were on the wiki so what was the point of the wiki (this was not true--the materials handed out in class and on the wiki were different--a point they realized when they received below-passing scores the final test). Students at my Japanese university do not necessarily have their own computers, the classrooms are not wireless, and few students bring an iPad or laptop to class. I face the challenge of adding technology to my courses in an environment that does not fully support such efforts.
As I revamp this particular course over the next six months for when I teach it again in the fall of 2013, I realize I'll need to spend more time introducing the wiki during class. I also plan to add more content to the wiki--more links to videos, articles, websites for their own research, maps and more. I will also need to adjust settings and try to make pages for each presentation group to share their materials on a wiki page for the class to view.
I will also be going through the list of Blooms Digital Taxonomy to see what more I can do to better model the learning process. Japanese university students seem especially capable at remembering and understanding, but seem less experienced with applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. With the list of digital additions, I can easily see what digital applications I might be missing and might consider adding next time.
Of course, there's a limit to what I can introduce--the aim of the course is not to teach these digital applications, but rather to introduce U.S. culture--to Japanese students in the English language. Furthermore, the low-tech environment creates limitations. Yet as we all know, we tend to learn quickly when we have to use a process or tool for studying or work. So I will aim to sneak in some of the most important tech tools that I think they will need. Many of my students take the Understanding American Culture course as one of the requirements for getting their teaching license. As potential future teachers, they especially need more tech tools in their virtual tool belts.
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